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For black talent, the Oscars never really change — but they should

If all goes well for Chiwetel Ejiofor, on March 2 at the 86th Academy Awards he’ll win the Oscar for Best Actor for his outstanding lead performance in 12 Years a Slave. But it will it be a portent of change? Sadly, perhaps not.

Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor stands a good chance of winning Best Actor for the leading role in 12 Years a Slave; doing so would make him only the fifth black man to win the award in history. (Christopher Polk / GETTY IMAGES)

If all goes well for Chiwetel Ejiofor, on March 2 at the 86th Academy Awards he’ll win the Oscar for Best Actor for his outstanding lead performance in 12 Years a Slave.

It this happens, as it should, it will be a significant event: Ejiofor will become only the fifth black man in Oscar history to win Best Actor, and the first black Briton to do so.

But will it be a sign of changing times? Sadly, perhaps not, and it’s something worth thinking and talking about in February, which we call Black History Month.

Follow the YouTube time machine to a truly historical moment from 50 years ago, when Sidney Poitier became the first black man to win the Oscar for Best Actor.

It’s the 36th Academy Awards on April 13, 1964, and Poitier is nearly overcome with emotion as he receives his award from a beaming Anne Bancroft, the previous year’s Best Actress winner.

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He’s as humble as Homer Smith, the kind-hearted helper of nuns he played in Lilies of the Field, the 1963 film that earned him his Oscar.

Poitier speaks of the “long journey to this moment” as he begins his brief message of thanks, referring to but not elaborating how it took nearly four decades of Oscar ceremony for a black male to finally win one of the coveted gold statues.

It was a fantastic moment, and Poitier, who had previously been nominated for Best Actor for his role in 1959’s The Defiant Ones, would go on to receive an honorary Oscar in 2002 in recognition of his extraordinary career.

But it was also something of a pyrrhic victory. Poitier revealed in his 1980 autobiography This Life that he felt a “terrific burden” of being part of a very small minority of black actors who could hope to follow in footsteps.

Hollywood, he wrote, “was not yet ready to entertain more than one minority person at star level.”

Indeed, it would be another 38 years before there would be another black Best Actor winner: Denzel Washington for Training Day. That same year also marked the first multiple black nominee for Best Actor, with Ali’s Will Smith also up for the prize, and the first black winner for Best Actress, Halle Berry for Monster’s Ball.

“Before Sidney, African-American actors had to take supporting roles in major studio films that were easy to cut out in certain parts of the country. But you couldn’t cut Sidney Pointer out of a Sidney Poitier picture. He was the reason a movie got made: the first solo, above the title, African-American movie star. He was unique.”

A bit too unique, as it turned out. Poitier, now 86 and retired from his film career (both as actor and director) and a later one in diplomacy, never again received a competitive Oscar or even a nomination after his 1964 win, despite starring in such acclaimed films as To Sir, With Love, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

It’s still a rarity when a black person is nominated for an Oscar — and to be fair, even rarer for other minorities.

There still has been no black winner for Best Director, although Steve McQueen could change that on March 2 with 12 Years a Slave.

There has been no Best Picture winner of a film by a black director. It wasn’t until 2009, with Lee Daniels and Precious, that one was even nominated.

Once again, this could change if 12 Years a Slave becomes a big winner on Oscar night, although the lead-up awards have been worrisome. There are major challenges from Gravity and American Hustle, and the possibility of surprise upsets in a very competitive movie year.

If the Golden Globes are any indication, where 12 Years a Slave was almost blanked before finally taking the prize for Best Motion Picture, Drama at the very end of a long evening, there’s no guarantee of any big “firsts” happening for black talent and films at next month’s Oscars. The nominations include a Best Supporting Actress nod for Lupita Nyong’o of 12 Years a Slave and Best Supporting Actor consideration for Barkhad Abdi of Captain Phillips.

But it would be a great shame if the nearly 6,000 Academy members, who are in the midst of filling out their final ballots (they’re due Feb. 25), miss out on the opportunity to make some more history.

Poitier tried to be hopeful in his 1980 autobiography, despite his reservations about Hollywood’s resistance to change. He lauded the success of the time of such actors as Washington, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Danny Glover and Lou Gossett, Jr.

“The impact of the black audience is expressing itself,” Poitier wrote. “They look to films to be more expressive of their needs, their lives. Hollywood has gotten that message — finally.”

He said this 34 years ago. I don’t know what he’d say today — my request for an interview went unanswered — but I think he’d have to admit that Hollywood’s embrace of black talent still isn’t as warm as it should be.

Change is happening, but it’s not happening fast enough.

Major wins by 12 Years a Slave on March 2 would help, and it would be wrong to think of it as tokenism. It’s a deserving film in every regard.

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